


rise

by hellodeer



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Getting Together, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-23 01:58:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10709763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellodeer/pseuds/hellodeer
Summary: Javier falls.





	rise

Himawari falls face first on the ice. Javier rushes to her side while Miki laughs.

“You’re doing it wrong, baby,” she says in Japanese, which Javier understands due to long exposures to Miki on the phone with her parents, and Yuzuru’s older brother act with Shoma, and Himawari’s endless babbling. “You need to keep your feet like this.”

She demonstrates by tucking her feet in a little, closer to each other. Himawari stares at her blades, fascinated, before blinking and pulling herself up without Javier’s help. She copies her mother sloppily on her wobbling legs, but it’s enough to keep her upright. She laughs to herself while the turns around in place over and over.

Miki skates until she stops behind Javier and closes her arms in front of his chest. He takes one of her hands and kisses it. Together, they watch Himawari skate to the other side of the rink, pigtail swinging from side to side, waving to them while she screams “Mommy! Javi-san! Look, I can do it!”

*

Javier goes back to Toronto in June, tired from all the ice shows, already missing Miki and Himawari. Effie pokes her head outside the bedroom as soon as he opens the door to the apartment, and lazily makes her way to him.

He bends down to pick her up, kiss her head.

“Me extrañaste?” he asks, to which she meows and gently slaps his face with a paw. He laughs. “Sí, sí, yo también.”

He sleeps the jet-leg away the next day, but Monday finds him at the Cricket Club first thing in the morning. Brian looks at him with raised eyebrows as soon as he sees him.

“What?” Javier smiles, lacing up his boots. “It’s the Olympic season.”

Brian shakes his head and lets Javier get on the ice. He’s in the middle of a flying sit spin when he hears it, so soft it’s almost lost to the sounds of his blades on the surface of the rink.

“ _Tadaima_ ,” Yuzuru says to the ice, bending down to touch it with a fond and happy expression on his face.

Here, looking at Yuzuru under the bright white lights of the Cricket Club, Javier finally feels that he is home.

Yuzuru’s online presence is hard to miss, even if he doesn’t have social media accounts of his own. Every day Javier sees hundreds of pictures of Yuzuru on his Twitter timeline and his Instagram feed, but he hasn’t seen Yuzuru in person since World Team Trophy. They haven’t really talked since a couple of days after the gala exhibition, when Javier sent Yuzuru a congratulatory text for the good season and Yuzuru sent him back a selfie, poorly-lit in his childhood bedroom in Sendai, Yuzuru’s frustrated and displeased frown twisting his lovely features.

“Oh, it’s Javier-kun,” Yuzuru jokes as he gets on the ice. He skates to Javier’s open arms and squeezes him into a hug. His breath ghosts over Javier’s neck, his heart beats against Javier’s chest. He smells of laundry detergent.

Javier kind of never wants to let him go.

“You miss me?” Yuzuru asks, boyish grin lighting up his face as he looks at Javier.

Javier laughs, the _yes_ on the tip of his tongue ready to slip out.

“Were you gone? I didn’t notice,” he says instead. Yuzuru pouts and punches him weakly on the arm.

Javier rolls his eyes, uses his hand still on Yuzuru’s waist to pull him into another hug.

They stay like that until someone clears their throat behind them. It’s Gabrielle, taking off her skate guards with a sheepish smile.

“Hi, Gabby!” Yuzuru says excitedly.

“Hi, guys,” she says, skating past them, her blades loud against the ice.

“Good sound,” Yuzuru nods approvingly. “Like _swoosh_.”

“Are you Brian now?” Javier jokes.

Yuzuru frowns. Puts his hands on his hips. Then, very seriously, says: “I am not old and with round belly yet.”

Javier laughs, startled. He ruffles Yuzuru’s hair, hand staying just a second too long, fingers tugging just a little too hard.

*

Towards the end of July, Javier tries to convince Yuzuru to go to Maia’s birthday party. It’ll be a low-key event, Alex had said, just a few of them with food and beer in the afternoon, a home-baked cake.

Yuzuru frowns, either at Javier’s invitation or the game they’re currently playing he doesn’t know. Effie hasn’t come out of hiding since Yuzuru got here; sometimes she likes to pretend she isn’t used to Yuzuru’s presence in the apartment.

“I have to practice,” Yuzuru says, as his fingers fly on the console.

“It’s one day off,” Javier says. On the screen, his character takes a bad hit on a shell and drops to last place. “Brian says you’re overworking yourself.”

“Brian not know anything,” Yuzuru mutters darkly.

Javier glares at him out of the corner of his eyes.

“They ask me to make silly video for them,” Yuzuru whines. “And I say yes. Can’t say no to Maia and Alex.”

“C’mon, it’ll be fun,” Javier says. “Marina Zueva will probably be there. She could give you a few tips on the new programs.”

“You think?” Yuzuru asks, head turning towards Javier in interest.

“Sure,” Javier smiles, sly, going in for the kill: “Maybe Johnny Weir will be there.”

Yuzuru sits upright in his seat, so fast and excited he drops the game console on his foot.

“I hope Johnny is there!” he says.

“Johnny is not here,” Alex tells them when they make it to the house, after hugs and happy birthdays, when Yuzuru keeps craning his neck to look around the living room. “He did send Maia a gift, though.”

“It was a lovely purse,” Maia says.

Yuzuru visibly deflates at that.

“Hey, we came all the way over here,” Javier says, sneaking one arm around Yuzuru’s shoulders to shake him lightly. It had been a five hour drive from Toronto to Michigan, on a rented car with slightly uncomfortable seats, Javier wearing his glasses to better see the road and Yuzuru fidgeting until Javier connected Yuzuru’s iPhone to the car radio and Yuzuru’s new program music filled the space between them. “Let’s enjoy it now, regardless.”

Yuzuru sighs, so deep and dramatic it’s like it comes from his very soul.

“I guess Javi is right,” he says, shaking his head. A small smiles forms on his lips. “Rare, but happens.”

Javier gasps in mock offense.

They make their rounds saying hello and eating the delicious snacks laid out on a big table in the corner of them room. Yuzuru stuffs himself with mini sandwiches; Javier eats croissants.

A couple of hours later they somehow find themselves on the couch, Patrick showing them some of the tweets people mention him in.

“They’re calling us ‘the uncle squad’,” he says, with a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

“I am not uncle,” Yuzuru frowns. “I am young. Playful.”

“A bully,” Javier says under his breath.

Yuzuru nods.

“More like cousin,” he says, satisfied.

“You’re like, forty-four in skater years,” Patrick points out. “That makes you an uncle.”

“I have to agree with him,” Javier says.

“Hmmm, I don’t think so,” Yuzuru smiles sweetly, which Javier knows to mean he actually wants to rip their hearts out and eat them.

“Face it, Hanyu. We’re not getting any younger,” Patrick says. Such a Patrick thing to say, Javier thinks: not very nice at all. 

They turn quiet, the mood suddenly heavy and sour. Javier sees Yuzuru clench his hand into a fist. He wants to reach out and uncurl his fingers one by one, until he can put his palm against Yuzuru’s and smooth the back of Yuzuru’s hand with his thumb, but he doesn’t.

*

He leaves Yuzuru chatting animatedly with Marina and goes to the kitchen. He pours himself some orange juice and pets one of the dogs when it comes out from under the kitchen table, until it gets distracted by Alex coming in.

Alex picks up the dog and lets it lick his face all over. Then he puts it down and walks to the fridge.

“Hey, man,” he says, cracking open a beer. He clinks it against Javier’s red plastic cup before taking a long sip.

He looks so young that sometimes Javier forgets Alex is actually the same age as him. 

“How are things with Miki?” he asks, as he leans against the counter beside Javier.

“Things are good,” Javier says. He smiles into his cup. “She’s great.”

Miki should be coming to visit soon. The weight of missing her is almost unbearable, some days, but they make it work.

“And with Yuzuru?”

Javier almost chokes on his orange juice. He manages to avoid embarrassing himself by pretending to clear his throat for a few seconds.

“Yuzuru is great. He’s my friend. My best friend, even. Cool dude. Incredible friend.”

Alex stares at him for a few seconds, silent.

“You didn’t actually say it, but I could hear your mind screaming ‘no homo’,” Alex finally says.

Javier feels a lot of things at once: caught. Found out. Uncomfortable. Wrong.

“Ugh,” he says, eloquently.

Alex bumps his shoulder against Javier’s.

“It’s okay, man,” he smiles. “No judging.”

“Okay,” Javier breathes out. Then, coming out of him like a flood, a dam that finally breaks and lets the water runs its rightful course: “You know when you’re going for a jump, and it’s a little off, so you don’t know if you’ll land it or not? And it makes you terrified that you might fall, but you also know that if you _do_ land it, it’ll feel even more incredible than a perfect jump. Those few seconds of uncertainty, when you’re scared but excited, and the only thing you can hear is your own heartbeat in your ears, that’s how Yuzuru makes me feel. All the time. You know what I mean?”

Alex blinks at him slowly. Javier is suddenly thirsty and very, very tired.

“Well,” Alex says. “I’m an ice dancer. We don’t jump much. But yeah. Yeah, I think I know what you mean.”

*

Around the time Patrick starts to slur something along the lines of _I have been doing this since before you were born, kid_ to Nathan, Javier decides it’s time for them to leave.

“So,” he says, hands on Yuzuru’s shoulders as he pushes him towards the car parked around the block. “Did you have fun?”

Yuzuru snuggles his right cheek against Javier’s hand. Then he turns around, lips stretched around a smile that exposes all his teeth and gums, eyes crinkling at the corners.

“Yes,” he says softly. “Thank you for invitation.”

Javier wants to kiss him possibly more than he’s ever wanted anything in his life, including an Olympic medal.

“No problem,” is what he says, moving his hands to the insides of his pockets.

They walk the rest of the way in silence.

*

“No,” Javier tells Miki on the phone, as he walks into the locker room. “The new choreography is a little tricky, but Tracy has been—”

He pauses. A wheezing sound coming from his right catches his attention.

“Javier?”

“Hang on,” he says. He turns a corner and finds Yuzuru sitting on one of the wood benches, head between his knees, gasping for breath. 

Javier runs to his side, puts a hand on his back.

“Hey, Yuzuru? Yuzuru!” he says, shaking him a little, but that only seems to make the situation worse, as Yuzuru begins to cough.

“Javier? What’s going on?” comes Miki’s voice from the phone still on Javier’s hand.

“I’ll call you back,” he tells her and hangs up, dropping his phone on the bench to put both hands on Yuzuru’s shoulders to try to make him sit upright.

“Inhaler,” Yuzuru gasps. “Bag,” followed by a string of words in Japanese and more ragged breathing.

Javier goes to Yuzuru’s locker and retrieves his bag from it. He searches inside until he finds the blue inhaler and hands it to Yuzuru, who quickly uncaps mouthpiece.

“Okay, one,” Javier says as Yuzuru breathes in, hand running up and down Yuzuru’s back. “Two, three…”

When Javier reaches ten, Yuzuru removes the inhaler from his mouth.

“It didn’t work!” he yells in Japanese, gasping for breath, eyes huge with fear. His whole body is shaking.

“Oh,” Javier says, realization dawning on him. “Yuzuru, you’re not having an asthma attack. You’re having a panic attack.”

“What!” Yuzuru says, his shaking now so violent he drops the inhaler to the floor.

It’s the Olympic season. Yuzuru has been stressed, even more than usual, frustrated with his jumps and choreography. Javier knows the feeling well.

“Listen to me,” he says. He puts his right hand on Yuzuru’s chest, above the spot where Yuzuru’s heart beats loud and frantic. With his left hand, he grabs one of Yuzuru’s hands and holds it to his own chest. “Breathe with me, okay? In.” 

A deep breath in. 

“Out.” 

A deep breath out. 

“Come on.”

They repeat it over and over for long minutes, until Yuzuru’s heart settles and he can breathe on his own.

“Better?” Javier asks, feeling himself raw and thin with worry and exhaustion.

Yuzuru nods, turns his head away to hide the tears threatening to spill. Javier wraps him into a hug wordlessly, kisses his head while Yuzuru cries on his shoulder.

*

Javier closes his front door and drops his keys on the empty fish tank he keeps in the entrance hall. He calls Miki. 

“Hey, sorry about that,” he sighs, sagging onto his couch. Effie comes to lie on his stomach. “Yuzuru had an anxiety attack, which almost gave _me_ an anxiety attack. It took him forever to calm down, and—”

“You like him, don’t you,” Miki says. It’s more of a statement than a question. She doesn’t sound accusatory, just thoughtful and wondering, but still Javier’s heart freezes.

“I would never do anything,” he says immediately. Miki chuckles.

“I know that,” she says softly. “Without my permission, you wouldn’t.”

*

Yuzuru stands in the middle of Javier’s living room. He hasn’t looked this awkward since the first time he came here, shoulders hunched and eyes darting from side to side, looking for an escape. It’s not a good look on him.

“So,” he says, after a deep breath. “What did Javier want to talk about?”

It’s been a couple of days since Yuzuru’s panic attack. Javier has had time to think long and deep, and the conclusion he has come to is this:

He is a figure skater. He is not afraid of falling.

He closes the gap between his body and Yuzuru’s and kisses him. Yuzuru gasps against his mouth, pushes him back.

“No,” he shakes his head. “You. Girlfriend?”

Javier laughs, so happy and in love it sounds almost hysterical.

“It’s okay,” he says. He cups Yuzuru’s face. “She said I could, Yuzu.”

“She,” Yuzuru starts. Stops, mouth agape. “What?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Javier says, and kisses him again.

Yuzuru doesn’t retreat this time. Instead he wraps his arms around Javier’s body and brings him closer, opens his mouth under Javier’s.

They kiss, sloppy and wet for what feels like forever and no time at all. When Yuzuru breaks the kiss, Javier follows after him.

“This is crazy,” he says, breathless and giggly as Javier drops kisses all over his face. “You crazy. Miki crazy!”

“Crazy for _you_ ,” Javier says.

Yuzuru’s snort is loud and ugly. Javier wants to hear it every day until he dies.

“Cheesy,” he mocks.

Javier rolls his eyes. Yuzuru kisses him again, and Javier melts against him, smiling into the kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> this timeline is probably all fucked up re: ice shows and when they actually train, but yolo. also i'm relatively new to figure skating, so sorry if i got anything wrong.
> 
> i got the idea of 'skater years' from Skateanddie's [fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9190862)
> 
> congrats to us all for surviving this season. can't wait to almost die in the next


End file.
